The goals of this training grant are to ensure that our fellows receive the training they need to identify a important scientific project, to obtain independent funding, to skillfully write scientific reports and to successfully manage a laboratory or a clinical research program. Fellows will need 2-3 years of training to reach these goals. To achieve these goals the Department of Anesthesia has developed a multidisciplinary research program integrating anesthesia researchers with basic scientists. Four research tracks are offered to fulfill the specialized training needs of fellows; the tracks are neuroscience and mechanisms of anesthesia, critical care, pain and addiction and vascular biology and bioengineering. The fellows are to choose a laboratory and mentor in one of these tracks, where they will develop a scientific project and learn to do research. The fellows will also receive extensive training from the many educational programs that have been developed for them. There are mandatory weekly seminars, monthly journal clubs, annual research events, and semi-annual grant writing sessions. Both the Anesthesia research faculty and the basic science faculty will attend these educational programs. Furthermore, the scientific community at UCSF offers a huge number of daily seminars, tutorials and lectures on biochemistry, biophysics, pharmacy and pharmacogenetics, neuroscience, immunology, bacteriology, cellular and vascular biology. The fellows will be exposed to high-impact, state-of-the-art science, and can develop collaborative relationships with both basic scientists and anesthesia researchers. Thc Research Director and an Executive Committee oversee the training program. The members of the executive committee include the Chairman of the Department, the Hamilton Professor, and four senior members of the Anesthesia faculty who are established researchers. The Research Director and the Executive Committee will choose the trainees, meet with them at regular intervals to assess their progress as well as to assess the success of the overall program. The Department of Anesthesia is dedicated to creating a training program in research that will successfully recruit and be utilized by fellows, medical students, and international scholars, so that there will be important new research in Anesthesia in the new millennium.